The Lair
by theslutofdiagonalley
Summary: Nobody was the same after the war. However Hermione Granger and Severus Snape seem to have had the biggest personality changes according to those at Hogwarts. Hermione has to provide for herself and so gets the only job she could find that didn’t need muggle credentials. She finds it is rather well suited to her but will Severus be able to figure out where she sneaks off to?


Chapter 1

Hermione awoke from a fitful dream feeling no more rested than when she fell asleep. Releasing a heavy sigh she wondered if this would ever change? If she would ever be able to get a sound nights rest? Perhaps, she thought, as time passed she would be able to move on from the wounds the war had left her with.

Scoffing at her wishful thinking she swung her legs over the side of her bed, silently thanking the fact that apprentices had their own quarters. If her old roommates could withstand her rather loud nightmares, which she highly doubted, she knew that they would certainly take offence to her current nakedness. However Hermione, who a mere year ago would have blushed rotten at being naked even alone; a product of never being truly alone in dormitories, now hardly spared a thought to her current state of undress as she slid her feet into a pair of obnoxiously fluffy slippers and padded off to her adjoining bathroom. At least, she thought, the war had rid her of her adolescent embarrassment.

Pondering this thought as she kicked off her slippers and hopped in the shower, she realised that the war had rid her of many of her more childish qualities. The most notable being her innate need to prove how smart she was to anyone willing; or at times unwilling, to listen. She had discovered during the war she rather enjoyed the spark of horrified surprise in her enemies eyes when she used spells that no witch of her age should know, let alone a muggle-born with no training in the dark arts. The war had turned her into a ruthless warrior only concerned with survival and victory, and the advantage she had been given by being constantly underestimated had saved her life more times than she could count.

Quickly finishing her shower and wrapping her hair up in a towel, she stopped short on her way out of the bathroom. Standing there in front of the full length mirror her basic but spacious bathroom housed, she was brought back to her earlier thoughts on her nakedness. Admiring herself from different angles she silently thanked Merlin that she had grown into a curvaceous and beautiful women. During the war, she had learned how to use her 'allure' to her utmost advantage. It was rather pathetic really the amount of men that could be reduced to a fumbling mess at the merest flash of skin and some carefully chosen words. More importantly however, her 'allure' was currently the only reason that she had a penny to her name.

She had no family to support her anymore as her parents were still in Australia still under the impression that they had no daughter, despite Hermione's best efforts to reverse the memory charms she had put upon them. Of course she knew Harry would always support her, but she was a proud woman who would not lower herself to taking handouts from her rich friend. No. She got by quite well on her own thank you very much.

Trudging out of the bathroom she stopped by her bedside to check the time. 6:15. Still having nearly an hour and 45 minutes til breakfast started she sighed and began pottering about her room tidying the place up a bit. Making her way to the side of her bed she picked up the scraps of satin and lace that she had peeled off after coming in last night before collapsing in a sweaty heap upon her bed. She briefly considered casting a quick scourgify, however quickly dismissed that idea in favour of throwing them in the sink to give them a proper wash. Deciding to just wash all of her work clothes;if you could call them clothes, while she had the time, she took the small satin bag hanging on the back of her bathroom door and proceeded to dump its contents unceremoniously into the sink.

As she began gently washing the delicate items, she relished in the mind numbing-ness of the task at hand. How her brain finally shut off. Before long she had washed, rinsed and hung up every piece to dry. She gave a small smile at the sight before her, reminded of the the old movies set in the 50's she used to watch with her mother, where a woman's bathroom would always be covered in drying stockings and undergarments. Granted hers were a bit more...out there, than the sturdy beige or white girdles those women wore. Hers were more for viewing pleasure than practicality. In spite of this the thought kept a smile on her face as she padded back into her room to see that she had been washing for nearly and hour. Wow she must have really zoned out she thought.

Deciding to just get ready and head up to breakfast she threw on some dark jeans, a tank top and some trainers, glad that the Headmistress had scrapped the practice of apprentice uniforms, now only requiring that they wear apprentice robes over their clothes during classes and meal times. She had seen pictures of the old apprentice uniforms in her worn out copy of Hogwarts A History. As professional and dignified as they looked she could not imagine standing over hot cauldrons while wearing such restricting and suffocating garments. Even Severus stripped down to his shirt while doing the particularly intensive brewing that her apprenticeship required.

At the thought of Severus she put her robes on and grabbed a hair tie to plait her still damp hair on the way up to the dining room. Knowing that her friend and mentor was a notoriously early riser she hoped that she would not have to sit alone for too long while waiting for breakfast to start. She briefly thought over how she had come to refer to Severus Snape of all people as a friend, a very good one at that.

They had all come out of the final battle with wounds. Hermione had recovered quickly from her physical wounds, however some people had faired much worse than. One of those people was Severus. The snake bite had very nearly killed him. It would have had it not been for the time and effort Hermione had put into researching an antidote for the venom while Severus was under stasis in the hospital wing. It had taken her 2 months and 14 days to figure it out, by which point she had been getting desperate and decided to look into muggle medicine for snake bite antidotes, and then the answer had became obvious. She had been trying to find a cure all. Something that could cure the venom and the dark magic in the bite at the same time, whereas she should have been researching how to heal them separately. She was fairly confident that the muggle snake bite antidote would work for the venom. After all, before Nagini had become a horcrux, she was just a standard snake with no magical qualities whatsoever. It had taken her another 3 weeks to find an ancient ritual to expel the dark magic from inside him. And then when she was finally sure that it would work, she had released him from the stasis.

Remembering back to that day put a smirk on Hermione's face. There had been a lot of...unexpected surprises, that came along with the ritual. It seemed that Severus had a lot of built up dark magic inside of him, eating away at his mind, body and soul. Why she had not thought of this before she could only wonder. However she soon found out that Severus without dark magic was rather different from the sour faced professor they all knew. For starters he had no dark mark and now actually looked his rather young age of 37 as opposed to the haggard looking man who had lived through two wars. But his outward appearance was only the tip of the iceberg. She would never forget the first time he opened his eyes and realised he had survived. She had very nearly fainted at the honest to god smile that seemed to burst out from within him, of course he had quickly reverted back to his sarcastic self. However there was a light in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. Now when Hermione found herself on the wrong end of his sharp tongue, she just laughed and threw her own equally acidic words back at him, which always caused a nearly imperceptible smirk to lift his lips.

She had visited him many times over the remainder of the summer, originally under the guise of checking up on him and later purely because she enjoyed his sarcastic humour and intellectual debate. They had struck up a tentative friendship that had progressed until it came to a head when she began discussing ways to bring back her parents memories. They had poured over countless books until they had come to the conclusion that nothing could be done without the serious risk of her parents entering a vegetative state. He had held her that night while she cried her heart out, realising for the first time that she would likely never get her parents back.

She shook her to rid herself of her dark thoughts. Thinking about her parents at this time in the morning was never a good idea. Climbing the last set of stairs to the great hall she checked the time to see that she only had 15 minutes to wait until breakfast appeared.

Steeling her mind against her dark thoughts and nightmares she put a small smile on her face and entered the Great Hall.


End file.
